Lately, as I have been brainstorming themes for my ceramics work, my mind has been drawn toward the earth's creations. This week, I started working through ideas for glazing that would allow me to color match some of the geodes and gemstones pictured below. My hope is to make functional things of beauty, modeled (somewhat abstractly) after nature.

On a Detroit visit at the end of 2013, we were lucky enough to spend a few hours getting lost in the DIA. Here are a few featured ceramic and sculptural pieces that were truly inspiring.

Back in December, Ryan and I moved into a new apartment which, unbeknownst to us, has an enormous downstairs storage space. For my birthday, Ryan rolled up his sleeves and set up the beginnings of a ceramics studio- equipped with an Amaco 100 2 speed potters wheel, a huge bag of black mountain clay, and all of the necessary tools to have an at-home setup. To continue to develop the functionality of the space, i made a Lowe's run and for $40 bucks and some imagination, i was able to build out functional shelves, buckets for hanging tools, and other storage options. Here's where we are so far. Hoping that once we shed some of the actual storage items in the storage space, we can convert the room to a shared art studio. It has a concrete floor, which would be awesome for working on larger scale paintings and sculptural pieces.